


patterns in static

by loveleee



Category: Riverdale (TV 2017)
Genre: F/M, Spoilers for 2x04, canon but also kind of not, is that vague enough for you?
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-11-08
Updated: 2017-11-08
Packaged: 2019-01-31 00:23:12
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 860
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12664512
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/loveleee/pseuds/loveleee
Summary: The tap at her window sends Betty’s heart racing for all the wrong reasons.(Spoilers for 2x04, "The Town that Dreaded Sundown".)





	patterns in static

The tap at her window sends Betty’s heart racing for all the wrong reasons.

_It’s Jughead_ , she reminds herself, picturing the look he’d given her as he’d been ushered out the front door by her mother just ten minutes earlier. The slight tilt of his head that said their night wasn’t quite over yet.

Still, she pauses as her hand brushes the edge of the curtain. “Jughead?”

“It’s me,” he confirms, his voice muted from the other side of the glass.

Betty’s pulse leaps in an entirely different way as she draws back the curtain and slides open the window, offering her hand for balance as he climbs into the room. His skin is cool to the touch, his jacket still damp from the rain.

Jughead shuts the window and shrugs off his jacket, laying it over the back of her desk chair. “You need to get rid of that ladder,” he says.

Betty rolls her eyes. “Obviously.”

She turns and crawls up onto her bed, tucking her feet beneath her. She tugs the neatly folded quilt from the foot of the bed towards her lap. “C’mere. You look cold,” she says, her voice gentler, and he does as she asks.

They shift back so they can sit up against the headboard, and Betty curls into his side, pulling the quilt up to cover them both. He smells like rain and grass and sweat, and she can’t remember the last time they did this, just sat together and _breathed_ , or if it’s even something they’d ever done at all.

“Your hair’s still wet,” she murmurs eventually, breaking the silence to touch the ends of his hair with her fingertips.

Jughead turns his head and looks at her like he always looks at her; like he knows exactly what she is doing. Betty pulls her hand away from his neck and he catches it in his own, his skin landing soft against her palm, and not the sharp bite of fingernails that she expects.

“So do you think he was there, at the meeting?” Jughead asks, rubbing his thumb over her knuckles. “The Black Hood?”

Betty shrugs. “Probably.”

“It feels like it was a test,” he muses, his other hand playing idly with the ring on her middle finger. The metal catches against her skin for a split-second, and she flinches, but he doesn’t seem to notice. “I don’t think he’s dumb enough to kill someone in a room full of a hundred people.”

She says nothing. Jughead’s fingers fall still.

“Are you mad at me?” he asks quietly, his gaze tilted down to where their hands are joined, resting on his thigh.

She wants to tell him the truth. The truth is that she’s angry in a way she’s never felt before: an anger that’s somehow gnawing and diffuse at once, too expansive to rest solely on the hunched shoulders of the boy beside her, but sweeping him up in its edges nonetheless. It’s Jughead but it’s also Polly, it’s also her mother and her father, it’s Archie and Veronica and the Black Hood and Clifford Blossom and everyone she’s ever met who set into motion these things that are happening, every little ripple that knocks her down just when she thinks she’s found her footing again.

If she were her mother, she’d tell him, _I’m angry at the situation._

“No,” is what she says instead. “I _miss_ you.”

“It’s only been a few days,” Jughead says, echoing his words from earlier, and she wonders why he can’t just say _I miss you, too_.

“I’m sorry if I’m having trouble putting things into perspective,” Betty says, “when a serial killer is sending me letters in the mail.”

He sighs and lets go of her hand. Part of her wants to grab it back, to apologize, to be the Betty Cooper that everyone else thinks she is but he knows she isn’t.

“Betts. I’m not going anywhere,” Jughead says. “But I can’t always _be_ there. If I miss school, they will call my foster family, and then I’m not living in the trailer anymore. And the trailer…do you know who’s keeping the electricity on in the trailer?” He swallows. “I know how stupid it sounds – it _is_ stupid – but I can’t just skate by on the Serpents’ charity forever. They expect something from me. I have to be _present_.”

“I know,” Betty says, after a long, long pause. “But it still hurts, Jug.”

He seems to recognize the tears pricking at the back of her eyes before even she does. He slips his arm around behind her, his fingers slipping beneath the hem of her sweater to brush against her skin as she turns into him, pressing her face against his shoulder.

“I’m sorry,” he murmurs, mouth against her hair.

“Me too,” she says.

“I love you.”

She’s thankful he can’t see the way her face screws up at the words. “I love you, too,” she whispers into his sweater.

“We’ll figure it out.”

And she isn’t sure if he means the murders, or the distance, or neither, or both. But she nods.

She wants so badly to believe him.

**Author's Note:**

> I kinda just felt the need to vomit out some words about the last episode (2x04) before the next one airs and the whole situation changes again. Sorry it's so short! That's what happens when you give yourself about 3 hours to write something coherent.
> 
> The title is from a Death Cab for Cutie song, "Lightness", because lately all I can listen to is the music of my early-2000s-high-school-youth. But give it a listen, I think it works with the tone I'm going for.


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